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Saturday, February 21, 2015

"I think we should have a day when all women don't go to work. If a handful of people in this country are going to decide whether or not we will receive healthcare, whether or not we have control over our bodies as to when we wish to have a child, then what would happen if 52% of the work force one day just withdrew and reminded those people in Washington how important we are?" Kathleen Turner, whose voice is my new favourite thing to listen to, on Here's The Thing.

Saturday, February 14, 2015

In honour of February 14th, this Weekend List is dedicated to love stuff. And before you roll your eyes, please know that this edition doesn't stray far from my usual interests in the mass of varying types of love; from solo-love and friend-love, to domestic-love and lovesick-love. This list isn't here to make anybody feel bad, and I hate that Valentine's Days is always offered up as this day that you either opt in or out of. We're all alone, and we all love other people in varying capacities; Valentine's Day should be the most universal day of them all, and celebrated with that sentiment as a starting point. Settle back into it. Here's an accompanying mix I made, featuring lines like "When I trust you we can do it with the lights on" and "I want to call you but I don't. I want to be smarter." There's Jarvis Cocker, and Hot Chip's Alexis Taylor, who are in my mind among the best popstars to sing about love and sex. Plus there's Joni Mitchell's song For Free, which was my January soundtrack when I was thinking and writing about my Granny a lot, and this ode to a stranger playing clarinet on a street-corner is one of the most quietly romantic songs I've ever heard.

A poem I return to each time I lose somebody, my feelings for them, or when I'm trying to blanche myself of the sad, unplanned heat of either of the two. W.H Auden's The More Loving One knows the peace of looking up at the sky and becoming re-grounded. (Listen. Or Read.)

"You are supposed to know opaquely and elusively and abstractly that everything is not over and that your purpose in life is so much huger than you can every imagine and is still saturated with value and that you will eat pesto and read Stephen Dunn and live in Manhattan." Break-up advice from one friend to another. (I didn't think seeing a tattooed bottom below this page would be part of the bargain, but I suppose you can't always plan these things..)

Alone Time

"I count living alone as, in a manner of speaking, finding interest in my own story, of prospering, of protest, of creating a space where I repeat the same actions every day, whetting them, rearranging them..." Since Living Alone by Durga Chew-Bose (one to cut out and keep.)

Dinner For One: an episode of BBC Radio 4's The Food Chain, dedicated to the melancholy of eating alone.

"I hated coming home from buying lingerie, obviously carrying a bag full of bras and panties.. In order to put it on, I would hide in the bathroom. During the reveal, he'd be reading a book about genocide and the cat would be taking up my space in the bed." Against Domesticity by Randa Jarrar.

Platonic Love

Where was it? Sometime recently I was reading a blog co-written by two female friends who described themselves as life partners, who were each married to other men. You know that feeling. It's when you walk home from the pub after sharing a bottle and spicy nuts, putting the world to rights with your best friend, and your belly feels warm and you clench your hands with an excitement reserved for promising third dates, except you know each other better than that already. And you might think to yourself, god I can't wait to grow old with this woman. It's tricky though, because like any romantic relationship the two of you might yo-yo, with one needing the other more at times, and feeling that acutely. Also, in most cases, we have multiple versions of this person in our lives. Few people pass years with just one archetypal playground best friend. There are many, each best girlfriend with her own corner, own needs and purposes, rarely overlapping with the others, though they all share a common description. My best friend. My favourite people to text are best friends. They really get it, and those threads of in-jokes and shared ugly photographs keep the world turning. Once I lay in the aisle of a train carriage, looking purposely ugly and pretending to be dead, with one best friend taking a photograph of me, so I could send it to my other. The one I have an on-going habit of playing dare games with. Now that I'm in a new relationship (I know!) I'm feeling this best-friend love more acutely. You have to tread carefully to balance the varying affections, to not let best friends get left out, but also to understand that this yo-yoing is all par for the course. Nobody really actually wants to be Frances Ha's Sophie, but then again Frances goes off and has that shit trip to Paris and finally puts on a production of her own. So who knows, it's all supposed to happen. In honour of it all, are text messages shared with my best friend this week, shortly after midnight:

Saturday, January 31, 2015

As somebody who spends a large portion of their time grazing on podcasts (and passing recommendations on to friends; both those who ask, and those that do not) it seemed right to compile my go-to listens into one succinct list. The nature of the world of podcasting means that word-of-mouth is still the best way of knowing what to listen to. I don't know why, but the programmers don't seem to have found a functional way of helping us to find podcasts unless we actually know what we're looking for. In a way, it's refreshing that there isn't a clever algorithm for just pigeonholing the wealth of podcasts into categories. Categories are rubbish, and rarely do the content justice, especially when they're titled 'Humour', 'Women's Interests', 'Current Affairs'. What are these things, and how do I get them all into one podcast? I just want tick boxes with options like 'Stress Relief' 'Good with Wine' 'No Annoying Voices' 'Life-Affirmingly Funny' and the ability to click as many as I want.

If you're somebody who doesn't listen to podcasts but wants to start, and you have a smartphone, you're best to begin by downloading Apple's handy purple-badged Podcasts app. That way you can download all of your podcasts straight to your phone, and happily bypass iTunes, which to me feels increasingly outdated.

This year I'm trying to branch out, and listen to more non-US podcasts. I'm also trolling my favourite internet people until they start their own. Of course, this list isn't exhaustive, but it's a good place to start, and I like that many of these podcasts sit in my subscriptions list thanks to the recommendations from you lot. Without further ado;Cool women talking togetherNerdetteA downside to some of the North American podcasts I listen to is the presence of those overly American inflections. The 'oh my gods' and the 'ughs'. I have a high threshold for this vocabulary after spending a term studying in Massaschusetts with the yoga-panted choruses of oh my god, wait what? reverberating across the dining halls on a daily basis. It does mean, however, that lots of my English friends won't tolerate the podcasts I recommend them. Nerdette is a good antidote; less hyperbole, more straight-talking. The premise is simple: we have all something we nerd out about. I especially like that recommended books, TV shows and apps are prescribed to listeners as homework.

PolitiniCovering the intersection of politics, current affairs and pop culture, presented by Washington-based power couple Daniele and Aisha.

Call Your GirlfriendIf Politini's Daniele and Aisha are a power couple in the romantic sense, then Animatou Sow and Ann Friedman of CYG claim the platonic power couple badge of honour. Airtime is dedicated to Kanye West, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Menstruation News, internet news and their feminist motivational concept 'Shine Theory.' If TED Talks were less white, and more female, with knowing eyerolls and real talk, they would be like Call Your Girlfriend. In moments of strife I often find myself wondering What Would Aminatou Do?

The Broad Experience10/10 for the title alone, Ashley Milne-Tyte covers the experiences of women in the workplace. From the issue of working for free, to the hell of networking, and getting what you want, balancing expectations, and emotions in the office. Incredibly useful whether you're in the first years of your career (like me), or later down the line and navigating issues of authority, progession, motherhood/non-motherhood.

PilotsOh internet, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. There's being able to order carbon monoxide alarms at 2am when you're sitting in your knickers, eating toast, convinced that you're being slowly poisoning. There are the Twitter parody accounts that make the world go round. And best of all, there's the blossoming of internet friendships. Think Miranda July and Sheila Hetiorthe wonderfully unlikely Twitter best friends Sarah Millican and Kim Cattrell, who are always gushy with each other. Even better when new online friendships end up producing an Actual Thing, like the Pilots podcast from transatlantic panpals Elizabeth Sankles and Anne T. Donahue. The pair chat shit over Skype and dissect the pilot episodes of their favourite television programmes, starting with Friends and Sex and The City.

Talking it outHere's The Thing with Alec BaldwinA new addition to my podcast subscriptions, I'm holding out to see if I have the patience for Alec Baldwin. I started with the Julianne Moore episode and found myself thinking let her talk! everytime he spoke over her. (Who speaks over Julianne Moore? Nobody. Only idiotic on-screen husbands.) I'm yet to find out whether Baldwin will tip into interruptive mansplaining territory, but with guests like Thom Yorke and Kristen Wiig, I'm happy to keep listening.

Savage Lovecast On-point, inclusive sex and relationship advice from Dan Savage that makes me want to re-train as a Sex Education teacher. Dan Savage is everything that Alec Baldwin is not, and thank god. Design MattersDebbie Millman talks with designers and creatives about making things, modern matters and daily routines.

StorytellingDeath, Sex and Money.Anna Sale's podcast loosely covers everybody's (apparently) three favourite subjects. Start with the Ellen Burstyn episode for fascinating insights into her life, and an important reminder of the fact that married women comparably had no fucking rights in the 1970s.

New Yorker Fiction.Writers reading short stories by their favourite authors. I like to slip my headphones on and listen to NYF while I take a walk around the city in the evening after a stressful day at work. An especially good podcast for nighttime walking when there's a chill in the air and your senses are heightened.

The Moth Radio Hour Named with a view to recreating the feeling of balmy summer nights in Georgia, and the tradition of storytelling on moth-covered porches, this is a constant reliable audio companion. I've guffawed publicly on trains to hilarious childhood anecdotes, and been hit over the head and forced to take a seat by arresting personal tales.

Jarvis Cocker's Wireless Nights.It's not everyone's cup of tea, but I like Jarvis Cocker's overly sultry radio voice, and always enjoy BBC Radio 4's Wireless Nights, which takes a cue from the sort of radio we've come to expect from the likes of This American Life.

Saturday, January 24, 2015

Joy! It's Saturday. There is very little to be done this weekend, except to let go and lay back into it . There's an overflowing recycling bin to empty, and that's about it. I can't believe we're only 3 weeks into the New Year. For me, January seems to have lasted about 2 months. On the 12th, my Granny died. Just a few days after I wrote about her, and then just five days later we were saying goodbye to her, with a service on a a beautifully frosty Saturday morning a few miles outside of Bristol. We burned her incense in the chapel before everybody arrived and even though I knew she was in that box at the front, it still felt like she was going to walk in, return from a holiday just in time for the festivities. We tried not to slip on the frosty flagstones. I shared big, tight hugs with her ex-boyfriends, even the ones I felt embarrassed around as a child, and it felt completely right. My Mum and I were among the six pallbearers, and carrying my Granny's coffin was probably one of my proudest moments. I know Granny liked the idea of a clan of incredibly handsome young men carrying her, but Mum has never let the women of the family get relegated by the (few) men taking the best jobs. It was a perfect send off, from Leonard Cohen's Anthem right down to the comedy moment when five pallbearers faced one way, with the sixth turned in the opposite direction as we prepared to carry her out. "To me, to you!" That gave the chapel the good laugh, and put the fun into funeral. We carried Granny out to Enough Is Enough, her coffin threaded with green foliage, purple lisianthus and yellow tulips. "No pink", we'd said. I balanced the oak on my shoulders, resisting the temptation to throw disco fingers, and tried not to trip over Cousin James's feet in front of me, or let my mules slide out from under my feet. We passed my Dad as we went through the door; he hadn't seen Granny for years, and didn't really say goodbye and we both had wet eyes. We all went home, with a car full of bouquets and willows in vases and delicious mustardy sausages all wrapped up in tin foil left over from the wake, and collapsed in front of the woodburner in our pyjamas, drinking red wine and letting it all wash over us, tossing us and soothing us.

Culture

"A lot of people knew my grandmother to be as nice as pie, just as a lot of people knew my mother as an incredibly talented theatre arts administrator and overall fun person to be around. Neither of these observations was objectively wrong, they just weren't the whole story. But there again, what can you say to that? In the history of the world, a whole story has never been told." It's amazing what the living expect of the dying by Meghan Baum.

"There are the soldiers and sailors pulling a night shift for no good reason other than orders, photographing themselves and their comrades on the verge of sleep or already under. Cops in noirish black and white, their pictures framed to show a bit of badge. And nurses. A lot of nurses." Instagram's Graveyard Shift by Jeff Sharlet.

"When you do that thing where you disappear and don't answer your phone for an entire evening- that really upsets me. Maybe not everyone would be upset by that, and maybe you don't think it's a big deal, but that's a sore spot for me." Karley Sciortino goes to couples therapy.

Gosh, this is good. Jon Ronson and film-maker Adam Curtis exchanging emails about power, the "mutual grooming" of social media, and why we ignore modern crimes. Adam Curtis amazes me as somebody who seems to see the things we don't, the warning signs that we miss (when we become too wrapped up in ourselves, or entertainment) with such effortless clarify. I found this email exchange fascinating, and can't wait for his 2 1/2 epic Bitter Lake. Jon Ronson in conversation with Adam Curtis.

Nowness x Apartamento Magazine apartment tours. Somewhat disappointingly the subjects seem to be exclusively rich, with a remarkable amount of contemporary art and modernist furniture. But how can you resist Christiaan Houtenbos and his dressing gown.

Odd Pears patterned socks that come in 'pairs' of three, so you can dress mis-matched or straight-laced, depending on your mood.

Thursday, January 08, 2015

Sometimes there's so much to say and no clear place to begin. Write
any daft thing down, but just start: over-the-shoulder advice from a parent
when bedtime was within sight and the homework nowhere to be seen. Even now, an
empty page balks back until cleaning the bathtub feels easier. Tonight is just
one of those nights, full of so much indecision that going to the pub and
finding words for a friend is a hardship. Even when it's not quite clear how
else you can spend the evening.

It's this feeling that has me pottering around the flat, doing
everything and nothing. I skipped the first track on an album and listened to
the rest of it over, as I have done all week. I laboured over a pot of daal,
only to freeze it straight afterwards. I wanted to lose myself in the cooking
like I might on another evening, cheeks flushed, radio on, wine glass in hand. Feeling
it all. But tonight I’m distracted and not at one with myself. This little pocket
of mine, this cosy flat isn't cocooning me like it normally does, and it’s
unsettling. This is my space,me,
champion of solitude, but I’ve found myself going from room to room, as
if I’ve put my keys down somewhere. Unfinished tasks spread across the place.
There’s a new hole that’s opened up and I hadn’t accounted for it being there.
But it’s there, and so lovely I want to sink back into it. It’s appeared out of
nowhere, this woozy little hole, growing and getting hungrier and becoming more
consuming and it feels alright to let myself get pulled in, especially now. My
family is gently shaking, there’s a small quake under the surface, measuring so
low on the Richter scale we can barely feel it, but we know it’s there. It’s
easier to ride through it when there’s someone else to hold onto, but that’s
not something I want to admit, because what if there wasn’t somebody else to
hold on? That’s not a very forgiving sentiment to have. But I want this other
who has recently started slotting into this space, my space, to be around. And
what for? So I can sit here and be equally distracted from my book in their
presence? Maybe I should just start this
album from the beginning. I look at the travel-sized bottle of eyewash in my
bathroom, so very glad it's there, and curse it for making my flat feel quieter than I feel comfortable
with.

"We've said everything we need to say, haven't we
lovey?" Granny said before I left her on Friday. These words left me with
such a deep comfort. I tucked them away along with "I'll always be close
to you" a line that in writing, looks lifted from a romantic comedy, but
which made me sob uncontrollably in the corridor outside of my work. Something
that she didn't need to tell me, but that felt truer because she had. People
don't really go away. I sat with these words, and the photos I took from the
big red trunk in her sitting room, and sat on the train back to Manchester
swimming in it all. I tried to put things down onto paper, into the very truest
eulogy possible. This was tricky in itself because the image of myself standing
in front of a crowd kept popping into my head, until it stopped feeling
terrifying and started feeling vain. A pre-emptive, self-congratulatory slap on
the back, like a drunken best man at a wedding, happier with himself and his
chosen words than the sentiment behind them. I wanted to get it right. This
wasn't going to be John Hannah devastating everybody, slewing them with e.e.
cummings. This is me, talking about my Granny and what she meant to me, to us,
to people in a crowd I don't yet know. A tug of war between the past tense and
the present, a crowd that isn't gathered yet but will be soon.

So we've said everything we need to say. Yes, and no. In a way.
When I'm back in Manchester, the line loses its power. There isso much left to tell you,
I think. There are things I have to say but I can't because they haven't
happened. Like, "Granny, my book is finished, here's the first copy."
or "Thank god, I don't feel repulsed any more. I'm happy and so in
love." I even realise now, quite bitterly that I don't know where that
bloody potter is! Somewhere near Tetbury, she couldn't even remember, she had
to drive around until she recognised the streets and found his shop. She bought
me that glazed pot with a geometric pattern for my last birthday, just weeks
before we found out she was ill. I opened it at work, telling Polly that it was
from "my Mum's Mum" so she would know it was from the writer Granny,
the one who writes me postcards about the changes in her garden, the peace of
the seasons adjusting. I wonder how many of those postcards she wrote to me
when she was ill and none of us knew it yet. I have a stack of them in a
drawer, in that tricky-to-read handwriting. Written mostly over the last four
years and it was probably growing inside of her the whole time, while she was
scratching an itch at the back of her head.

In February she wrote me;

All well here. Life is full of good things. Yesterday I had lunch
in the garden! The bulbs are coming up. Spring will be here soon.

She signed off take care my lovely girl and carry on living
life to the full!! then there was an asterisk, and tucked into a tiny
gap was written *it's a knack we both seem to have...

It's a knack we have because she gave it to me. She plonked it
right into my lap, along with the uncontrollable urge to pee whenever in a
bookshop, scrapbooking and being kind to souls; one's own and those of others.
The latter, a Christian relic from her upbringing as a vicar's daughter, is always
a work in progress, of course. Even when we want not to, there are always some
people we hurt along the way.

I sat on that train and spread the photographs out. Annie in
Mallorca. Tanned and glamorous, heavier and happy. Annie’s daughters sitting at
the dining room table, looking the same but also different. Annie standing on a
Cornwall coastal path, hair dyed chestnut red, framed by tall grasses and
eleven shocking pink foxgloves. A careless grin, the sort produced when the
person on the other side of the camera really knows you, and you really know
them. It was Joan behind the lens, one of Granny's oldest friends. This was
just one of their many trips together; Joan would fly over from Vermont and
they would set off on adventures typified by belly laughs and walking boots. As
they got older those protective knee-bandages would come along for the ride too,
but the Thelma and Louise spirit was still there. Though she was married to
Grandpa for almost 30 years, Granny has had dozens of mini-marriages too.
Enduring female friendships especially, with women of all generations. Goths,
health freaks, university friends, musicians, survivors, pragmatists, her
fellow welsh women and crop circle enthusiasts, all picked up along the way.
Annie has shared her warmth with them, given them hours over the phone, and all
together they created this bubble of incredible female energy, a power you
can't bottle, but can’t help but pass on. A bunch of gossips sharing this
not-so-great secret on. Surround yourself
with this energy, and everything will fall into place.

To call Granny a 'strong woman' doesn't seem to do her justice,
because nobody is strong really. Does strong mean you bulldoze through, not
feeling things, never making mistakes? If we change our conception of strength
to include flaws, hypocrisy, personal growth and a consistent loyalty it's a
much better fit. Granny is strong, flawed and glorious like all my favorite
women are. In her red trunk she has a folder labelled 'Life's Work
(Professional)' which for anybody else might sound dubiously ambitious, but
which for her makes total sense. She's been constantly working; on herself, on
her mind, her relationships and her beliefs about this world. The curiosity has
kept her young and active. She used to be a teacher, reading DH Laurence to her
pupils, and always willing them towards subversion and new tastes. But she's
always been a learner too, and I have always admired the fact that she isn't
scared tolook like
a learner, or to look out of depth in her new chosen field of interest,
elbowing her way through to the experts as a visible newbie. She's been doing
this for as long as I've been here. In the trunk I also found a hand-drawn timeline
of 'Important Life Events', starting not at 1942, but at 1992. What had
come before was just as important; the Africa years, the births of Lucy and
Mary, that Christmas as a child when the popular girl at school got to dress up
as Carmen Miranda and Annie had to go as a fir tree. But 1992, aged 50 was when
an important chapter started for Annie. She didn't know it then but it would be
the beginning of a twenty-year period of getting to know herself again, after
her children had left home. She took herself on a six week tour of India, her
first trip alone and toed that line of cherishing beers beneath bougainvillaea
and then feeling quite melancholy, only to go back to feeling on top of the
world the next morning. It was during this time that Annie learned to be alone
after Dick died, and came to acquire that knack of living life to the full. She
would be formative in moulding my small mind, teaching me that a good life
could come from carving out a space for yourself, but also being open to
others. I watched her carving her space. She carved it when we walked down the
pavement, and she carved it in her little flat, where we spent afternoons after
she had picked me up from school. A photograph from the pile on the train table
showed a view her garden; courgette plants, yukkas and ivy sprawling in the
background, and at the front, a wicker table. Set for one, with a cup of tea
and a book open flat in a perfect pool of lunchtime light. I imagined her full of
the moment, jumping up to grab her camera so as not to forget that afternoon
and the others like it in A Garden of One's Own.

This is where I come stuck, because what do we mean when we talk
about living life to the full? She's only 72-that's
not full. When Granny first found out she was ill she wrote this
wonderful eulogy for herself. An alternative eulogy, packed with white lies and
great, big glaring additions. Me and my Mum always jokenever let the truth get in the way
of a good story,a reference
to Granny's skill for exaggeration. So in that sense Granny's eulogy was
nothing but true. There was a trip to Mongolia, a fling with a yak farmer,
adventures in Morocco. All the while the continuing need for work to be done,
all the time out-witting illness.

Granny hasn't outwit this illness, and she knew she wouldn't from
the beginning, I think, even when she was making us mad by talking about living
for another 10 years, undoing it all by taking sea kelp medication. But the
peace and acceptance she has at the end show that she feels she has lived a
full life. Not as full as she might have liked but blooming close. And anyway,
what's this fantastical obsession we all have with the ideal death? The work is
never done. Very rarely is the last page complete. One of life's greatest acts
of mischief is that there's never a conclusion. It just yanks the carpet out
from under your feet. It's a wonder that we're always hunting for bookends, for
closure, when we know we will rarely find them. We all have to go, and Annie is
going. We don't like it one bit, but we loved her and she loved us and thank
god for that. "I'm going to ignore Dylan Thomas and go gentle into the
night." she said recently from her bed. She’s managed to stay in her own
home, and that’s been the best bit of all. She said that she’d been going to
some deep places during her naps. Going deeper and deeper. Dipping your toe in,
I said, taking a rekkie ahead of the journey. I always thought that watching
the deterioration of somebody you love would be the most harrowing thing; she's
gotten so very thin but I’ve been surprised it's not been so nearly as terrible
as I’d initially imagined, because she's still Annie. This is all par of the
course, we are all constantly changing on the surface, our bodies as vessels,
transforming faster at times than at others. Along the way we are ourselves,
great life-long projects, the work of us, and the others we choose to pass the
bricks to. She has this bell next to her bed, and she rings it when she needs
something. It’s actually pretty funny. She rings it, and summons whoever
happens to be pottering about downstairs. There's always somebody now, because she needs them there, and those friends, the energetic females have gathered, because 'in sickness and in health.' Whichever close friend or relative
will come up the stairs, like a servant ascending from the quarters. You see,
at least I know I’m not making it all up, she says.

Over Christmas I spent a lot of time walking around the park. It's
the triangle at the centre of our houses, between my Mum and Andy, and Mary and
her family, and Granny. It’s the park I spent three summers working in, making
coffees for people and doing the crossword and sweating profusely at times. I
walked along the paths feeling so sad, and stumped by it all, but also so alive.
That doesn’t sound like a tasteful thing to say in the context of the dying,
but there’s nothing like looking down into that strange void for blowing the
cobwebs away. When you can walk around a park aimlessly and just watch the
trees, and the changing light and go slowly, things add up. Small pleasures
announce themselves and the presence of time becomes more prominent. I watched
a pack of small boys doing loops around the park on their micro scooters, and
was tickled by the one falling behind at the back, absorbed by the tarmac moving
beneath his feet, not watching what was in front of him. I could see the blue sliver
of Granny's house at the bottom of the hill, and thought of her in bed where
she would be watching the tops of the trees, and the sky, with less time than
us. I looped around some more, passing the same dog walkers and the same Dad
gently saying ‘come on’ as he pushed his daughter uphill on her bike. I recognised
them as a pair I had sold ice lollies to.

Use your time and use your words. It's important to use your time
and use your words, because I think that's what we mean when we talk about
living life to the full. And they don’t even always have to be the right words,
because as we know, you always have to start somewhere, even if it feels daft. You
can’t always deliver a line that’ll knock somebody sideways with sadness,
though actually it’s pretty skilled if you have the knack. I'm back to feeling
comforted by Granny's line. We've said everything we need to say, and really
she already knows the rest of the words that are still to come. She knows that
what lies ahead for any of us is what lies behind for her. It’ll all tick
along, almost as before and I’ll still feel her here because we used our time
together, all 23 years of them, and it feels almost remarkable that it wasn't
twice that amount.

Ever read something on this blog that touched you, made you guffaw, or that you passed onto a friend because you thought they might like it? If so, would you like to buy me a coffee to enjoy whilst writing at the weekend?